UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — HUB-Robeson Galleries will present "Recipes," a solo exhibition by artist Christine Sajecki, in Art Alley from Aug. 19, 2026, through Jan. 8, 2027.

Working in encaustic — a process that uses molten paint made from beeswax, pigment and damar resin — Sajecki grinds pigments harvested from her environment and incorporates recycled commercial pigments saved from years of studio practice. Her work explores ways to use waste and culinary byproducts in painting.

The exhibition will be on view on the first floor of the HUB–Robeson Center. Art Alley is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except during University breaks and holidays. A reception will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, in Art Alley. The event is free and open to the public.

Recipes explores stories told through materials and their origins. Many of the materials in Sajecki’s paintings were gathered near where they were made, in Appalachia, Virginia, a region with a rich material history. The valley’s iron-rich soil once supplied nearby foundries that produced pig iron for Civil War cannons. When a trench was dug along Sajecki’s street in Lexington, Virginia, it revealed ancient clay beds with marbled layers of robin’s-egg blue and deep, fiery orange.

The exhibition incorporates clay from downtown Lexington alongside crushed iron ore from the same valley, embedding the landscape within the paintings.

The materials ground into Sajecki’s paint come from diverse and unexpected sources, each with its own story. They include pearlescent material received from a shuttle bus driver at the Tucson Gem Show; fragments of a broken craft model of the Taj Mahal; shells from a neighbor; rust from an old cauldron; and the bones of a groundhog that died on her street, Sajecki said.

For Sajecki, the process of gathering and transforming these materials is central to the work. She described the process as a way of understanding how materials come together and what they become.

“There is power in knowing what things are made of and how they are made,” Sajecki wrote, “and when we don’t understand, there is power in our curiosity to figure it out.”

Christine Sajecki’s paintings have been included in juried and solo exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Her work appears in print and online albums, periodicals, and books of poetry and fiction. Her children’s book, "Rocks: What Are They Doing?", co-authored by Michael Máké, was published by Publishing Genius in 2024.

Sajecki arrived in Lexington, Virginia, in 2023 with her son, August, following chapters in Baltimore, Maryland; Savannah, Georgia; and her native rural Connecticut. She maintains her studio practice at Thunder Ridge, an arts and cultural community near Natural Bridge State Park.

For more information about this and other exhibitions, contact HUB-Robeson Galleries at 814-865-2563, visit studentaffairs.psu.edu/student-life/arts-entertainment/hub-galleries, or email galleries@psu.edu. Class, student organization and office visits are welcome.

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